


A Call to Arms

by greygerbil



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 02:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8826880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Sometimes, the Shambali have to defend themselves. With not many fighters among the peaceful monks, Genji has to help. Despite Zenyatta not being a fighter unit, Genji finds his master also has something to add to a battle.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Genyatta Week 2016, prompt "Overwatch Mission/Battling side by side".

The first thing Genji learned about the way Zenyatta fought was the way he healed.

During a training session outside the Shambali monastery, Genji fumbled a landing from a mountain, slipping on a sheet of ice that had been hidden under a thin layer of snow. Tumbling ungracefully to the ground, he felt a sharp stone pierce through one of the slits in the carapace holding together the remains of his torso.

Leaving red spots in the snow, he walked back to the village and addressed the first Shambali member he could find. She was replacing tiles on the roof of the shrine in the outer yard.

“Do you have any medical supplies for organics?” Genji asked.

“Yes – but you are Zenyatta’s student, aren’t you? Why don’t you just go to him? He should be in the elephant temple,” she said, looking down at him.

Genji wasn’t aware that Zenyatta had special talents in that direction, but he also didn’t know what he had done before he became a Shambali. Nodding his head, he thanked the nun and continued on his way, his palm pressed to his side.

Indeed, Zenyatta was shovelling snow out of the open temple with the elephant statues in front of it. When he spotted Genji limping towards him, he immediately put the shovel down and met him halfway on the stairs.

“Genji, were you attacked?”

“Ah, nothing so dramatic, Master. I just slipped,” Genji said with a self-depreciating smile that Zenyatta could not see behind the metal cover in front of his face.

“I hesitate to say that is good, but better than the alternative.” Genji could always hear Zenyatta’s smiles, even if nothing showed on his still face. “Here, take this. It should help.”

From the chain of orbs around his neck, Zenyatta plucked one and held it in his hand for a moment. As Genji stared at it in confusion, it seemed to charge with energy, glowing from the inside even though Genji knew it was not hollow. When Zenyatta handed it to him, it felt heavy and warm, and the heat flowed from his fingertips down his metal arm and from there into his whole body. He felt a strange prickling in his side. As he pushed his finger between the plating, he found that the skin which had been raw was completely smooth again, and no new blood was welling.

“How did you do that?” he asked, stunned.

“I have learned to channel the powers of the Iris,” Zenyatta said. “I can help humans and omnics alike, as long as the wound is not too grievous.”

Though Genji’s flesh had knitted back together, he was still loath to give up the orb, which made him feel like he had just woken up fully restored from a long, dreamless, fast sleep.

“Amazing. I didn’t know that was possible.”

“So far, only I seem to have figured out the intricacies, but I mean to teach it to any of my brothers and sisters who show interest. It is a sad necessity here to be able to heal fast and without the time to properly dress a wound or repair a part.”

“Why so?” Genji lowered his hand with the orb. “Is there really much danger?”

Zenyatta picked his shovel up out of the snow.

“Not a lot, but we have had problems with people who come to challenge our views before. Sadly, sometimes, they do not just want to talk.”

Glancing towards the gate of the village, Genji gripped the handle of the sword at his hip, holding it tightly as he still clutched the orb with the other hand. If anyone tried to menace the peaceful Shambali as long as he was here, they would come to regret it.

-

“How was your practice session, Genji?”

“Good,” Genji said, folding his legs into a tailor seat as he sank down next to Zenyatta on the stone ground. “Although without an opponent to spar with, they can be rather repetitive.”

“Yes, that’s a problem. We have few here who enjoy fighting,” Zenyatta agreed. “Maybe, next time, I could be of some assistance? It cannot hurt to hone my own skills, either.”

“You?” Genji hoped he had not sounded too insultingly incredulous, but Zenyatta moved slowly and did not have a frame that Genji thought would withstand direct hits very well. “How do you fight? Do you have a gun?”

“No, my bullets are a little bigger than that.” Again, Zenyatta drew one of the orbs out of formation. They were meditating inside the main temple, since it was a cold night with thick snowflakes falling, and he let the ball shoot forward against a barrel on which some unlit candles stood. It rattled loudly, and the candles fell over. The ball returned to him.

“It was suggested to me once that I could throw knives at people, too, but I don’t want my attacks to be deadly. Of course, it’s not comfortable to catch a four pound bronze ball to the head, provided I aim it correctly. I do not practice enough, though.”

“If you fired them at me, I could learn to dodge,” Genji said, warming up to the idea. “I will need a wooden sword, though. I do not wish to draw my blade on you.”

“Nor do I wish to be at the sharp end of it,” Zenyatta said, bemused. “I am sure we can ask Ora. She is very talented in crafting most anything.” He let the ring of balls whirr faster before picking another one out. This one, too, seemed to be filled with a strange energy, but it was dark, bleeding purple at the edges, sucking light rather than emitting it. “I have also been practicing this. Would you mind testing it for me?”

“Of course. What is it?”

“A weapon of the subtle kind – but do not worry, it should not physically harm you.”

Zenyatta directed the orb to float above Genji’s head, from where a tendril of dark energy snaked down to his shoulder. As soon as it touched him, Genji felt a sudden surge of paranoid dread raise within him, the kind that descended in the dark of the night after catching a shadow moving in the corner of one’s eye. Uneasily, he turned to look towards the open doorways, wishing he had his swords with him, and where he had expected to fill his head with the quiet of meditation, it seemed like suddenly, every corner and crevice of his mind in which he had banned his doubts and fears was pried open by invisible fingers.

“What do you feel?” Zenyatta asked, curiously.

“Doubt”, Genji said, trying to shake off the feeling that his ribcage was tightening around his lungs. “Anger.”

Fear, too, but he had never been good at admitting that.

He drew in a deep breath as Zenyatta took back his orb and the infusion of ice water into his veins stopped, though it had left his mind in disarray.

“I hope that if I put it on someone during a fight, I can distract them,” Zenyatta said.

“That should be no trouble,” Genji muttered. “It was very unpleasant.”

“I’m sorry you had to be my guinea pig, Genji,” Zenyatta said, chuckling, but with honest compassion. He tapped another ball and made it light up again. “Would you like this to make up for it? It doesn’t heal the mind, but I have been told it is fairly pleasant to hold on to.”

This orb was directed to stay above Genji’s head, too, shining just for him. He relaxed his shoulders.

“I will take care never to get on your bad side, Master,” he said, smiling briefly.

-

Genji had been training with Zenyatta for several weeks when, one night, he was woken up by Riwan, a skittish former surveillance unit, whose usually blue lights were all glowing bright red.

“Genji, come fast! Mondatta wants everyone who knows how to fight to join him in the shrine at the village gate!”

“What’s happening?” Genji mumbled, forcibly drawing himself out of the moor of sleep.

“There is a group of radical Humanity First members moving up the hillside!”

The vents on his shoulders released pressure as Genji jumped to his feet, his fatigue gone in a blast. “I will be there,” he said, as he grabbed his swords and already found his mind racing through the options of who he would meet at the shrine. The number of Shambali who he believed to be of any value in a fight was desperately small.

Much as he had feared, Mondatta had only a half dozen omnics collected around him, Zenyatta among them. Those monks and nuns here looked like they had been security personnel before they had awakened. Zenyatta seemed rather small and breakable standing among the much sturdier frames, making Genji secretly wish he would withdraw behind the castle walls, too, even though during training, a lot of (then quickly-healed) bruises had attested to the fact that Zenyatta could cause disruption in a fight.

“Is there any chance we can talk to them?” Zenyatta asked.

“They shot at Riwan on sight, so I doubt it,” Mondatta said. “Perhaps I could try, but it would surprise me if they would not use the opportunity of me showing myself to target me.”

“It’s too dangerous, brother,” one of the security omnics, Taka, agreed.

“Then we will handle this as best we can,” Zenyatta said.

“Take care. Do not kill if you do not need to, but defend yourself as you see necessary,” Mondatta said. As he stood there with his hands clasped behind his back, Genji thought that he was only missing the proper armour to pass for a general. “We have already alerted the police down in the valley, but you know it always takes a while for them to make it up here. Depending on who has the leading shift tonight, they might even slow down on purpose in the hopes that Humanity First may have some more time to achieve their goals.”

Gravely, Zenyatta inclined his head. “With Genji, we should have a better chance than we did before – although I don’t think we’ve ever faced the numbers Riwan described.”

Genji joined Zenyatta’s side, watching Mondatta and Riwan retreat behind the safety of the next set of walls, and towards the main temple. Aside from the noise of the howling wind, he heard only the voices of humans from afar.

“We should greet them outside,” one of the security omnics said. “If we only take the fight here, then they will already have breached our first line of defence without resistance.”

“I wished to never make these kinds of choices again,” the tallest of them muttered. He stood at almost twice the size of Genji and his chest was as broad and thick as a fridge. Each step he took on the way to the gate sank deep into the snow.

“We all just want peace, brother,” Zenyatta said gently. “But sometimes, we have to defend it. Let us pray that those who follow after us must not suffer that necessity.”

They moved out of the gate and took cover behind the large, unlit stone lanterns along the path. It unsettled Genji that Zenyatta, having not been built for a combat option, was the only one of them who could not dim his lights on cue, but only cover them with his hand. The glow would make his head a target.

The first shot fell in Zenyatta’s direction, then, but was blocked by Jaffa, the reluctant behemoth omnic behind which Zenyatta had ducked. Genji sprang up and on top of a large collection of stones to let loose a rain of shuriken on the people that were moving along the path snaking around the corner below.

The men and women who had come up the slope carried flashlights, which made it easier to count them. There were about twenty or so, all armed. No one among the omnics had proper weapons, Genji knew; they only carried shotguns that were decades old and even those most Shambali would have wanted to ban from the monastery.

Genji had just jumped onto the face of the mountain to scurry along it and get behind the attackers to break their formation when suddenly, he saw a thick, round object fly through the air in an arc.

“Grenade!” he shouted at the omnics below, but it was too late. The thing must’ve been military grade, for even Genji was wiped off the mountainside by its blast. As he fell, he saw the omnics collapse left and right into the snow. His head hit the ground with an audible _thud_ , leaving him dizzied.

When the air around him began to glow golden, Genji’s first thought was that somehow, the Humanity First thugs had managed to light a fire in the snow. In his mind, he saw the stones of the monastery black with soot, the wooden furniture the omnics had made piece by piece reduced to ashes, the inhabitants strewn about the grounds in parts.

Then he realised that this was not the light of flames and it was not the shock that drained his pain. Energy flowed through him and he heard the attackers exclaim in panic, shouting over each other. Turning his head, Genji saw Zenyatta in the middle of omnics slowly coming back to their feet. He glowed like he housed the sun between his metal parts and there were several golden arms stretching from his torso, as if reaching out to all who were around him.

Genji shook off his awe and took hold of his swords. The time for cautious defence and pacifism had been over for him the second he saw the grenade. Closing his eyes for just a moment, he called upon the power of his dragon, which leapt from his blood through his skin into the cold mountain air.

With a battle cry, he threw himself into the lines of the members of Humanity First. Unsettled by Zenyatta’s display, they were now completely dispersed by the sight of an ethereal dragon curling around Genji slashing his sword. He was nowhere near such an easy target as the simply built, cumbersome omnics and as he had expected, suddenly being matched against a fearsome foe, the bravery left the thugs very quickly. He cut someone’s Achilles tendon through their boot, had another one fall with a sword through their shoulder, got a volley of shuriken stuck in the hand of a woman pointing a gun. Next to him, the security omnics were heavily pushing in, and as the golden light behind him faded, it was replaced by a dark orb hovering over the head of a man who turned to flee, and the golden one settling above Genji once more.

Those of Humanity First who did not crumble into the snow fled in terror down the hillside. Genji pursued them with his blade drawn until the last of the stone lanterns along the path, then caught his breath and turned, running up to the village again.

The omnic monks and nuns were removing weapons from the fallen Humanity First members before they took them up in their arms. Zenyatta had his healing orb on a man whose blood coloured the snow around him, kneeling next to him on the ground. When he started to groan, Zenyatta withdrew the orb and waved at a nun to take the man.

“I hate to do this, but if I healed him too much, I do not know what he would do,” he said, looking up at Genji. “It is best he should recover the normal way until he can be brought back into town.”

Though Genji would have rested easily letting these people crawl down into the valley if they could, or die in the snow if they would, he knew the Shambali never let any being suffer if they could prevent it – even if said being had just thrown an anti-tank grenade at them.

“What was that you did?” Genji asked, still breathing hard.

“Desperation,” Zenyatta answered, with a bit of a laugh in his voice. “Truly, I am not sure. I channelled the power of the Iris as I do when I prepare my golden orb, but I knew that that alone would never be enough to keep all of us standing, and I tried as hard as I could. Now I feel like I have been without recharge for weeks, though.” He cocked his head. “You did exceptionally well, my student. Without your help, I don’t think my healing would have kept them at bay for long.”

“Thank you, master. But now, let’s go inside.”

Genji offered him a hand. As he pulled Zenyatta up, he froze in shock as he saw that he was missing one leg from the knee joint down, his wide yellow trousers hanging in tatters over the broken metal.

“We’ll repair it,” Zenyatta said quickly, seeing his gaze, and reached out to touch his cheek. It was only a brief caress, but it woke Genji out of his stasis.

“Are you in pain?” he asked, wrapping his arm around Zenyatta’s waist as he saw that he made no attempt to float, and pulling Zenyatta’s arm over his own shoulders. If he tightened his arm around him a little more than necessary to support a small service omnic with his powerful synthetic muscles, then it went uncommented by Zenyatta.

“Soon, I won’t be. I can be fixed easily,” Zenyatta said calmly as they followed behind the omnics carrying their wounded foes. “It is too bad that we have to ask you to fight,” his master added. “I knew you came here to avoid that.”

“Yes,” Genji said, haltingly, “but without my new body, I’m not sure if I could have protected you all tonight. So it is in situations like this that I see there is some value in it.”

“Your soul is in it, Genji, that alone gives it all the value it needs,” Zenyatta said, as he pulled the large gates shut behind them with his free hand. “Never forget that. You are both a formidable fighter and a person of worth.”

“I may need you to remind me every once in a while,” Genji said.

With a flick of his wrist, Zenyatta let the golden orb raise above his head again.

“Whenever you need it.”


End file.
